Advice on etiquette at the orchestra

October 11, 2010|By Barbara Brotman

Did Muti fever tempt you to dip your toe into the CSO?

The fever has broken; Riccardo Muti has canceled the rest of his fall concerts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for health reasons and has flown home to Milan. But the hoopla over his start as music director of the CSO is still reverberating in my mind.

For years, I've felt lucky to live in a city with a world-class symphony but left it at that. In more than 30 years, I've gone to maybe two concerts.

The world of the CSO seemed intimidating; the music, daunting. Would I hear what critics would later describe? Would I understand a piece's structure, meaning or importance? Could an ordinary soul crack the code?

Muti-mania made me want to try, even in Muti's absence. So I showed up Thursday night, with Israeli conductor Asher Fisch pinch-conducting a program of Wagner, Carlos Chavez and Beethoven.

I took my seat in the top-floor gallery and started asking the experts, aka the Symphony Center regulars, what advice they had for newbies. The veterans turned out to be friendly folks who welcome newcomers. Here are some of their suggestions:

• Go to the preconcert lecture; the CSO offers one before every concert. The more you learn about the music, the more you will enjoy it.

• Listen, listen, listen to classical music. "Listen to WFMT," said Sheila Nelis, of the North Side, a subscriber with her husband since 1976. "Find a composer you enjoy. If you have time, listen to a little more music from that era."

"There's a stigma attached to (classical music), that's it's snobby," said Jim Nolen, of Elmhurst, a 48-year CSO veteran I met at the preconcert lecture. "The opposite is true. …The musicians are so friendly when you meet them. They're ordinary, working-class people. We had a bassoon player who collected fossils."

• Don't applaud between movements. It is considered an interruption and distraction. One person began to clap mid-Eroica Symphony Thursday night and was summarily shushed.

"Check the program; count out how many movements there are," advised Ron Johnson, of the Near North Side, a 40-year veteran with three separate subscriptions. "And you have to watch out for Tchaikovsky. He has tricky endings."

• If you are sitting in the gallery, don't lean forward in your seat; that blocks the view of the person behind you.

• If you are sitting in the gallery, be taller than 5-feet-3. The metal bar between my row and the one in front of me blocked my view of the conductor and the front of the orchestra. However, in other rows I checked out during intermission, the bar was no problem. I advise trial and error, and a seat cushion.

• If you are sitting in the gallery, don't wear bifocals. You are looking down at the musicians; you don't want to be looking at them through reading glasses.

• Sit in the gallery. Not only are these the least expensive seats, but gallery regulars swear they have the best acoustics in the house. The sound travels up along the curve of the ceiling and "comes right at us," said Arnie Samuel, of Palos Hills.

• Read the program during the concert. "The program notes are always good," said Pat Thomas, of Oak Park. "As you listen, you can read."

• Don't read the program during the concert. "One of my pet peeves is the way people turn the pages," said Nelis. "It's loud."

• Look as well as listen. "Watch the way the music moves from place to place," Nelis said. "It moves from the strings to the brass to the horns to the woodwinds. … It's just really cool to watch it."

• Don't hold off on the CSO on account of Muti's absence. "There are a lot of good conductors," Johnson said. "Don't worry about big names."

• Be born into a music-loving family.

Difficult to arrange retroactively, but doing so you would address a challenge described by Charles Pikler, the CSO's principal violist, when I ran into him on the "L" after the concert (see above on musicians as regular people).

It is extremely hard for anyone without significant exposure to classical music to truly understand it, he said.

"It's something that has to be cultivated," he said. "Beethoven's music is filled with philosophy. …You can't just come to one concert and understand it."

But he hopes beginners try. One concert, after all, can lead to another. And another.

Decades ago, there were also newcomers venturing to the CSO for the first time. Go to any concert today, turn to the people sitting around you and say hello.